Oh! That Explains A Lot!

Oh! That Explains A Lot!

Oh! That Explains a Lot!

By Kevin Hill

Genius Within Inspire Course Facilitator

This year I turned 50. My Jubilee year has brought with it a number of surprises. One of those surprises was doing an assessment and discovering that I was in fact: Dyslexic. Now that came as a surprise and a bit of a shock. I always thought I was just bad at spelling and grammar. You see when I was at school the whole county decided that we didn’t need grammar and so they didn’t teach it. However, now I understood my situation was mostly caused by being dyslexic. I now had to understand what that actually meant to me and what I needed to do about it.

Genius Within were great and very supportive. They offered me some coaching. I was coached on how being dyslexic not only affected my reading and writing but affected other areas of my life too. I was shown how my organisation and memory were affected. A greater understanding of how I processed things in my brain was really useful. In addition to myself getting coaching my line manager had some coaching so she would know how better to assist me. She was advised to send shorter emails and keep on point with all communications. Also if there are any work meetings I now request any notes to be given to me beforehand so I am not distracted by the notes while trying to listen the person speaking.

I was given some practical advice and practical solutions. I came to understand that I needed more time to write reports. Genius Within agreed that instead of writing a daily report for each course that I could just do one end of course report. Another practical way of working with Dyslexia I was told to write things down and plan my day, week and month. Now this was hard to get into at first. More Work!!!! More Writing!! However it is becoming a good habit in me. One thing that I discovered is that when I write notes for myself I am now including a lot more little pictures rather than words. This is helping me loads as I am a visual learner.

So to conclude these few and humble lines I would like to offer my gratitude for all the support from Genius Within as I journey on this ship called Dyslexia.